Couldn't resist dipping into the screenwriting part. Akiri Kurosawa made his dialogue writing seem easy. He explained he was writing down actual speech he had experienced. But Mr Kurosawa had followed human interest in asking why the bar owners pitied the man, and he had remembered an embarrassing conversation that many of us would have forgotten.

Mr Kurosawa must have great determination to have made good on his declaration that movies must be made with characters beyond the lower middle class.

It is sad to note that it is not only filmmakers in Japan who are focusing on story with formulaic characters.

The take-away message for me in this excerpt is: "A story naturally forms around a well-drawn character."